Spectres of Reality
by Whiteflame13
Summary: This is the continuation of 'Sword Art Online : A Different Story' focusing on the events after the world of Aincrad fell apart. The game of death was ended, the castle destroyed and the victims released. But for some reality is far from them as they are now nothing but spectres in a new world.
1. Chapter 1

I lay in the soft bed looking absent-mindedly at the white panel ceiling listening to the steady high pitched beeping of the cardiac monitor sitting next to me. I still had wires patched onto different places around my body, some reading my heart rate, some reading my blood pressure and others doing a job that I couldn't even try to comprehend from the brief run down given to me by the white cloaked doctors.

I lay there and my mind slowly began to go over events, trying to make sense of them and trying to reassure myself of the truth behind them. It had been a week since Sword Art Online had been cleared and the grand floating of Aincrad destroyed after over two long years of fighting and dying. Three of my friends had died in there.

Andrew, Adrinn, and Oliver, Torinn, had died fighting against the player killing guild who called themselves The Laughing Coffins, both going down trying to protect others, trying to give others a chance to live that bit longer at the cost of their own lives. The two of them had been killed by players, murderers who if they still lived were likely to never see justice for the horrific crimes they had committed in that world.

And then Steven, Woods, he had been there, fighting alongside me up until the very last boss battle against the terrifying power of the Skull Reaper. He had run out of healing items and didn't take the time from the battle to scrape some more either from his inventory or those around him.

In the end I watched him get obliterated by the merciless scythes of the 75th boss, sword broken and health non-existent. His body had disappeared along with all of his items in a flash of light and a flurry of particles, as he stood protecting Sky who was knocked to the ground with no way of getting up.

All of us had seen him die, all of us saw his HP bar hit zero and all of us were forced to watch his body dissipate and vanish from existence. Yet down the hospital hallway in a small, private room, Steven was lying in a bed, like I am, with his heart still beating and his body still breathing oxygen. For some unknown reason he had survived dying in the world of swords, yet he still wasn't truly alive in this world. Even though he was still alive his Nerve Gear is still active upon his head, keeping him from the real world and threatening to kill him whenever it pleased.

However even though I had forever lost two of my friends and was at the point of losing a third, there was a gleam of happiness that came from the end of that virtual world. Both Sky and Aurora had survived it along with me and were now somewhere in this same hospital being treated back to good health. I had yet to speak to them much due to the constant flurry of hurried and put out doctors trying to keep the 34 English survivors alive, well and most of all away from the glaring eyes and ears of the media crews and journalists that had seemingly begun laying siege upon the hospital which we were being housed within.

When I had woke from the virtual world my body was numb and weak, stopping me from moving very far or even holding anything with a strong grip. But thanks to the magic of 21st century medicine and huge amounts of food and drink, I was regaining my strength and I could walk quite far if I had something to support myself with.

I was nowhere near the sort of physical fitness of when I entered the game or even of when I was in the game, but as with all of the survivors we were taking the slow walk to both physical and mental recovery, even though it seemed impossible to heal all of the scars left by such an ordeal.

The door to the small room opened with a heavy woosh, breaking the monotonous sound of the room. I raised my head to look at who had walked into the room, expecting to see one of the many doctors that had come and go to help with different aspects of my body. But instead I was met with a short, but plump, man in a black suit standing by the side of my bed. He had an organised mess of shortish brown hair, distinct hazel eyes, a rough red face and his hands dug deep within his pockets.

"Am I right in thinking that you are Andrew Thoron?"

I looked at the man for a few seconds wondering who he could be or why he was here, but no explanation was forthcoming and there was little I could do other than answer his question.

"Yer, I'm Andrew. But who are you and why are you in a private hospital room?" I got straight down to what I was thinking, yet I was still more interested in resting and getting back to my routine of contemplating the past two years than what he had to say. However I pushed myself closer to a sitting position so that I was in arms reach of the alarm cord dangling by my bed and so that I didn't look as vulnerable.

The man gave a short humoured laugh before replying, "You can call me Mr Newton. I am here to collect you for a meeting about the end of Sword Art Online and some more information that you may want to be privy to." He seemed satisfied with his short explanation, however I looked at him with an inquiring stare, wanting to know exactly what he was on about and weary of him being a journalist.

"I presume you want to know more before you leave this room." He said with a sigh. He had hit what I was thinking right on the head with a swift and scary precision and I was starting to truly worry that he was a high end interviewer or something. He then pulled a chair over from next to the door and sat down.

"Huh, I suppose I should explain myself further then. I am the leader of the legal group that monitored all of the British Players and was the one who led the campaign to keep you in the care of the NHS instead of being placed private care where your parents and relatives would have had to pay out ridiculous amounts of money to keep you alive." This was the first I had heard of this kind of organisation, but I was put slightly at ease as it seemed that he wasn't one of the journalists I had feared, but I still kept my guard.

"In extension, I am also in charge of maintaining and overseeing the tech and server groups that have been monitoring your Nerve Gears. So in summary I've been keeping you and the rest of the British players alive." He continued in a calm yet restrained and slow voice.

It took my brain a few seconds to process the depth of what the man had said but when it came down to it all of the players in this hospital owed their lives to this man. I presumed that he also had made efforts to keep us sheltered in this hospital, away from the media and legal interrogators, which considering that it was a London hospital must have been an extremely hard task to pull off.

However two years in SAO had taught me to be cautious of anybody and of things that they said sounding too good to be true, even though this was the real world and in a secure environments 'old habits die hard'. "That still doesn't explain why you want me for some meeting or tell me what the meeting is about."

"Good God, I've been told that you lot are stubborn and cautious of everyone that you don't know, but I never believed that it would be this tricky." He remarked with a alight chuckle to himself. At this I smiled slightly, happy that we had gained such a reputation for being awkward with what we could consider to be outsiders.

"Well if you want it all on the table before we even leave the room I may as well tell you what's going on. As you may know one of the players, Steven Keywood, who went under the username of Woods has yet to disconnect from the virtual world and is still in a state of unconsciousness. As of a few hours ago, when I last checked the reports that have been sent to us, there is an additional 299 players in the same state as Mr Keywood, making up 300 people."

"To put this in perspective 10,000 people went into that game and 6,147 of those players are still alive, 300 of them still trapped for some reason. We have some vague ideas as to why this may be possible, but nothing concrete. As for your part in this, we have been told by two young ladies, who will also be attending this gathering, that you knew Mr Keywood before the game and throughout the game." He said this once again with a contented smile but his face showed a firm finality to what he was saying.

The number 6,147 quickly stuck to my mind and for a few seconds that was all I could think about. 3,853 people had died in the floating castle of Aincrad, the majority of them innocent and unsuspecting children and teenagers who had been taken from their families, friends and lives by a game which ended up killing them. And even though so many people had died, sacrificing their lives to try and complete that pointless game, 300 people were still presumably trapped within the virtual world.

However my mind also latched onto the fact that he had said about two girls, who were also going to be present, that had said that I had known Steven for such a long time. After going through the very small list of people this could be I was left with a certainty that it was Sky and Aurora. I looked at the man, still not 100% convinced on his story but seeing little way out from this situation and the chance of seeing both Aurora and Sky and the possibility of being told why Steven was still alive outweighed my doubts and cautious state.

"All right then, where are we going for this '_meeting_'?" I asked slowly, keeping direct eye contact and making it clear in my tone that I still didn't trust him, however genuine he seemed. It just all too good, even for the real world things like this were normally bound to books of fiction written to tell a story and to entertain, never are they a real representation of what the reality of life is though.

I swung my legs out from the side of my bed and with effort pushed myself onto my two unbalanced feet, pressing up against the wall and taking deep breaths. I then moved my hand over the cardiac monitor, turned it off by ripping a wire from the back and them moved on to ripping the patches attached to me off.

The man sent a concerned look at me and was about to say something before I swiftly cut him off, "I don't need help, just show me where we're going." He looked slightly offended by the sharpness in my voice but closed his mouth, turned and walked over to the door.

Before SAO I would have been accepting of help from others, if it was offered, but now after being able to rely on myself and a small number of trusted people for so long I hated people pitying me and trying to help me do things that they believe I can't. So now when people try to offer me help I shoot their offer down without hesitation or care for their insulted and worried looks.

The man opened the heavy fire door with a slight woosh sound and walked out into the large hallway containing the majority of the British SAO survivors. I slowly walked across the room, making sure that my legs weren't going to give way under me and I gripped the smooth metal handle of the door and pulled it open with all of my strength. I left the room and leant up against the wall once again to catch my breath slightly before continuing.

The suited man, was standing outside my room looking down to a chained gold pocket watch. He looked up at me, closed his watch with a slight snap and signalled for me to go ahead of him down the hallway. I dragged my feet forward and he took up a slow pace behind me.

The journey down the hallway took much longer than it should have due to my physical condition forcing me to stop every so often, slowing my already slowed pace. By the time we had reached the end of the hallway Mr Newton, as he called himself, looked slightly bored and impatiently kept getting his watch out, as if to see every second which had passed since he last looked.

On the right hand wall was a door much like the one to my room, but with a large "Private" sign attached to it and the small rectangular window in the centre of the door had been blacked out, stopping people from looking in or out. Mr Newton looked up once again from his watch and with a slight murmur of "Acceptable." motioned me to go into the room.

The room itself was exactly the same in structure and layout to my own room and all of the other rooms which I had seen so far, however the contents were very much different. A number of glowing and beeping machines all set in a semi circle around a large occupied bed, each with a variety of coloured and sized wires leading to the person lying still within the bed.

The person had a grey plastic head gear on, dark visor included, meaning that I couldn't see who it was from this distance, but I knew this had to be the room in which they had been keeping Steven and therefore the person hooked to all of these machines had to be him. Around the bed and the machines were three people.

One was standing just back from the bed holding their left hand at their side, they had extremely long smooth and straight brown hair which fell around her slight and seemingly frail figure, this person was wearing a white shirt and white trousers, a patient, Aurora. Another was an older man who had dull blonde hair which in competition with the visible gel was flat upon the man's head, he looked rather tall, however he was currently sitting down so I couldn't gauge how tall exactly, he wore jeans a black shirt and a brown leather jacket, this was someone I had yet to meet.

The other person, like Aurora wore patients clothing and had hair flowing down her back. But unlike Aurora it was a bright blonde blonde colour and seemed to stick out slightly in different places. She was kneeling by the bed and her head was lying on Steven's unmoving side. From a glance I could tell that it had to be Sky and I would have been surprised if this was the first time she had been at his side like this.

Aurora turned around as she heard the door opening and looked at me for a few seconds. Her blue eyes had lost a lot of their shine and were red and the skin around them was visibly raw, she was pale and she looked as if she had lost a lot of strength and weight. But as she saw me her eyes brightened slightly and the saddened smile turned to a feeble smile. On impulse I moved forward and embraced her gently, knowing that she was still in much physical pain.

She eventually returned the embrace and with relief placed her head on my shoulder and leaned her light weight into me. The man sitting in the chair to the side of the room lifted his head in slight surprise, seemingly not paying attention to the door, and got up with a sharp clap from his hands. Sky however stayed were she was, possibly asleep or not wanting to move from the state of peace she had somehow found.

"I presume you are Andrew Thoron?" The man asked eagerly, not even attempting to keep with the calm and somewhat muted feel to the room.

I raised my head and looked at the man for a few seconds, he had blacks surrounding his eyes and his skin was visibly starved of light. "Yes, that's me." Was all I could muster while the tender feeling of being so near to Aurora spread through my body.

"Good, good. Excellent. Shall we get this over with then, as I can see that I'm not really wanted in this room considering the reason we are all here. So I can either give you a long exposition of sympathy and pity or we could get tot the point of us being here and try to do something about our sleeping friend here." He said this with such conviction and indifference that even Sky moved her head around to look at the man, even if it was a brief second of contempt.

The man saw Sky's look and the slight glares that me and Aurora had sent in his way. "I presume we take the latter option then?" He said hitting the nail on the head. "Well then for a start I'm Daniel Hackett, and I've been the one who has been watching over the servers that Sword Art Online ran on, specifically looking at the connections from your nerve gears to the servers hosted in Japan, currently by RCT inc. with their new game." This introduction meant little to me, but from this quick description I presumed that he was working with Mr Newton, instantly making me harbour a slight distrust for what he did or said.

"Now as we can all expect when the game ended each of the players disconnected from the server one after the other practically. However we observed that when a person dies in the game they are disconnected from the server approximately 5 seconds before the NerveGear can fry the player's brain." He spoke slowly so that we could try and follow what he was saying, but there was little hesitation or pausing almost as if it had been practised or at least thought over thoroughly. This made what he said sound fake and without much care for us three.

"But we did see one exception to this." As he said this he moved his head in the direction of Steven, so that we were clear on who he was on about.

"Around 10 or so minutes before the game ended, I don't have the exact times with me but its around there, his NerveGear disconnected from the main server host for a good 10 seconds before reconnecting to a server under the name of RCT inc. for seemingly no reason. We presume this server change caught him just before he was going to die in Sword Art Online and so kept him alive during that final fight. But as he was now logged into what looked like a different server he didn't disconnect from Sword Art Online like the rest of you did." At the mention of the final fight my mind flicked back to images of it that were present in my dreams, I also felt Aurora tense her body slightly.

After Sword Art Online finally came to close the main server structure keeping it running was supposed to have been taken down, or at least not used this early by RCT. Yet when we tried to directly trace Steven's nerve gear connection back to the server we get given the name 'Alfheim Online', but we can still see that its near enough the same server structure as used in Sword Art Online, just reinforced by other server shards which had to be used before Sword Art Online had closed down." The man spoke with a maniacal smile and a glint in his eye, he obviously relished in explaining things which he had found to others. But he was met with looks of confusion, causing him to lose some of the shine in his eyes and his smile wavered somewhat.

"Right, yer its a bit complicated and long winded. But we have made some sense of it and have made steps to save your friend. Ok, in short what I'm trying to say is that Steven, along with the majority of his player data was transferred onto Alfheim and it is likely that he is now somewhere in that world. Under this conclusion me and two of my colleagues have gone into Alfheim to try and find evidence of our theory. Buuut as its still at its heart an MMORPG, we are restricted massively by our levels, money, gear and just general skill and teamwork it seems. Now however pathetic our efforts were we managed to acquire some bits of interesting information. Around the time that SAO went down people felt the world shake slightly and bright lights were seen to fall from the sky around the world, the people that went to investigate the lights however were slaughtered without even seeing what they were being attacked by. Hopefully this is where you come in." He ended his long speech by taking a few deep breaths and looking expectantly at us.

"You want us to go in to that game?" Came the quiet question from Aurora, with a tone of worry and doubt. At this the man simply nodded with a smile.

"And why do you think we can be of any help?" Sky said still with a darkness behind her voice.

"We believe that the servers are the same as SAO's and so we can presume that the player data went with it, meaning that you are likely to retain all of your levels, money and possibly items." He said directly to Sky in a calm manner, not in any way put off by her manner.

"So as we have our levels and such from SAO you think that we are better suited to finding out about this '_information_' that you speak of, on the off chance that its related to Steven?" I gave a quick summary while looking at the man's bubbly expression with one of darkness and doubt.

"So, will you do it or not?" He said with a finality to it.


	2. Chapter 2

_This chapter has been beta reviewed by shadowcaster01, so a big thanks to them for making this section much better than I could written done on my own_

* * *

><p>We stood in a large room which contained a three simple beds, each with a NerveGear placed upon the pillow with wires plugging into a gently whirring machine in the centre of the room. At the back of the room, a small table cluttered with an array of monitors sat beneath a wide window overlooking a small garden space behind the building. Beneath the table Long wires connected the computers to the whirring machine.<p>

I stood with Aurora and Sky next to the beds while Daniel Hackett hurried around the room. He checked each machine carefully to ensure everything was connected and running smoothly, hopefully so that we'd have no problems logging in. As we faced the beds and our old NerveGear helmets I couldn't help feeling a bit conflicted and uncertain about everything. They'd held us prisoner for two years, but they had also left us in a world of salvation where we were independent and freer than we ever could be in reality. Without Sword Art Online, none of us standing here would have ever met and our lives would be extraordinarily different.

I was abruptly snapped out of my thoughts by a loud clap and, looking up, I noticed that my friends were just as startled. Daniel had finished working on the switches and turned around to face us and the maniacal smile which had returned to his face again."You're sure you want to be doing this?" He asked us cautiously.

"If we weren't," Sky quickly retorted "why would we be here?" Sky quickly retorted. I could hear a dark edge in her voice and I couldn't blame her for it. I didn't wholly trust him either – but we all agreed that this was something we had to do together. Aurora had taken the longest to persuade, although I understood her fears of being trapped again. I just hoped that they would be unfounded.

"Right, yer, gotta remember who I'm dealing with." He came back with a small smile. "But down to business. When you enter the game you will be asked to sign into the game, if you can remember your old SAO login, use it. If not, close the game and we can go down the long road of recovery, which is tedious at best." He spoke, once again as if it was rehearsed to some degree. The fact that it sounded as if he was reading out of a script, giving the impression that he was some sort of fake, made me inclined to trust him less.

He had also said that we were to be using our old logins from Sword Art Online. That was something that I didn't want to do, I wanted to let go of that old world and to try and move on. I wanted to forget those two years, but I knew that that time would stay with me for the rest of my life and the dreams caused by that game would serve as a haunting reminder. Using that old login would likely mean returning to that body and I couldn't help but feel that the game would once again trap us.

"When you get in you will be given the option to choose what race you want your character to be from 8 different races. As you can expect each gives different attributes and skills specific to that race." Daniel continued on slowly and a bit louder than before, pulling me from my thoughts to pay attention to what he was saying. But with a quick glance to my side I could see Aurora looking at one of the nerve gears with a blank stare.

"As the three of you are going in together I would suggest all picking the same race to make sure that you end up relatively near each other when you spawn." He ended his little speech with an affirming nod of his head and a wide grin formed on his face. The grin on his face reminded me of a mad doctor looking over one of his experiments, letting it play out with a small nudge here and there.

"It's all set up to go in, then?" Aurora asked slowly, while her eyes still hung blankly to the grey helmet placed on the bed. I could see her hands trembling slightly and I could hear that she had started breathing faster, possibly in panic. It was clear that she was scared of going back into the virtual world, even if there was a promised logout button.

"They should be," Daniel said after a few seconds of thought "But just to make sure of things I'll get each of you to go in turn." He sent a quick glance a glance to the large machine the NerveGears were connected to before he sat down in front of one of the monitors. As he started clicking and typing away, the three of us looked at each other with trepidation. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this, hopefully it would return a dear friend, but I feared that we lost him when he was killed by the Skull reaper.

Eventually Sky's expression changed and she seemed to have an air of determination about her. She moved over to the large bed, put on her helmet and lay down. Seeing no point in stalling I went to follow suit, but was stopped when a familiar hand squeezed mine. I looked up to see the worry and fear on Aurora's face; I simply returned the grip and gave her what I hoped was a brave smile before going to follow Sky's example.

I almost dropped the old helmet back onto the pillow. I don't remember the helmet alone being that heavy, yes it was large and filled with circuitry and sensors, but it was only just heavier than a general climbing helmet. I guess I'm still a bit weak but, then again, it hasn't been that long since I woke up. So I gripped the helmet firmer and with a bit of effort I managed to slip it on. It fit perfectly and its presence and weight felt somewhat familiar to me. With the NerveGear on my head I lay down on the soft bed.

I looked through the grey tinted visor up at the ceiling, but my eyes came into focus on the clock on the visor display. The black clock read 13:00 exactly.

I couldn't help remembering the day Sword Art Online first came out, when I was in my room booting up the system not long after it released. Back then it had seemed to be such a cool thing to do. Putting that grey helmet on felt so liberating after using computers for so so long; now I actually live inside of them. But the initial euphoria from the game wore off when we couldn't find the logout button. There had been no way to escape the world apart from the penalty of failure: death.

"Okay, Megan."Daniel called out to the three of us. "You can be the first one to log in."

I didn't recognise the name he called, so at first I thought that there was a fourth person in the room somewhere. Though there was only three NerveGears set up and I don't remember hearing anyone else come in while I've been on the bed.

After a few moments it suddenly hit me. In the two years that I've known them, neither Aurora or Sky has used their real names, only Ingame Usernames. They knew my own name, of course, but out of habit I suppose they'd never thought to mention their own names. It hit me hard to think that, even though we were close friends, I really didn't know them as well as I thought or wanted.

"Link start!" I heard Sky, or Megan, shout out the command.

The room went silent for a minute or so before Daniel called out again: "Amy, your turn now."

After a few seconds of what could be hesitation I heard Aurora call out the command, her voice much quieter than Sky's - no, Megan's.

I waited again for a small while before Daniel's voice rang out again, "Damn it, just remembered to tell you about logging out." I would have thought that talking about logging out would have been an important thing to talk to us about, considering what had happened to us. But for some reason I trusted him more for it, maybe he wasn't reciting from a drill manual after all.

"When you get to it you'll need to do it in a safe zone as otherwise your avatar will be left inactive wherever you logged out, letting people attack it." He continued at a fast pace.

"Also we're not keeping you on life support this time, so do try to log out more frequently." He ended, leaving the room quiet again. His last piece of advice did make sense in the fact that we would have to log out at least once or twice a day so that our real bodies don't die from starvation or thirst. After two years in a game being fed by wires and then three weeks having food brought to us every few hours, this seemed somewhat a foreign concept.

"Link start!" I shouted the words with confidence when I was sure that Daniel wasn't going to comment further.

The world around me faded to a deep grey before changing to a blinding white, where colourful tube-like objects flew past me. Just like in SAO, several hexagonal panels appeared, each checking the senses and moving off to the side. When all of them were lined up they lit green and left the screen, replaced by a panel verifying language. It automatically chose English before disappearing.

The next moment I stood in a grey, circular room with orange lighting flickering in different patterns. Welcome to Alfheim Online appeared in front of me in a glaring white before speeding at me and vanishing. All of the wall panels morphed into a bright blue, providing more light. This room looked the same as what had been presented to me in SAO, it worried me and I hastily took a step back from the centre of the room worried that I was being placed back in Aincrad.

A blue holographic panel appeared in front of me asking for the name I wanted to use. I glared at the thing for a few seconds but, with trembling hands, I typed in the name Terra. I chose the name not out of choice, I held no feeling for it more than it being almost like a mask, but I had to return to it so that the other two could recognise me. I hit the button for male and confirmed my choice.

The panel vanished and a number of figures appeared in front of me in a circle, floating somewhat from the ground. Seeing so many figures appear out of nowhere made me stagger back and reach for my sword. But I realised that I no longer had my sword and the figures were just static models.

A new panel had also appeared in front of me asking which race I wished to play as. On closer inspection there was nine figures, each with differing physical appearances and representative colours. The models however had something that I was not expecting at all, wings. Each had translucent wings protruding from their backs, sparkling a little and styled by race.

I quickly scrolled through the races, each had their name and attributes displayed in the panel. However I was drawn to one of the races for its description, Salamander. The panel described it as the best fighter and the perfect wielder of fire. But it was also described as the best race for player versus player combat. As I read the words my entire body froze, this game condoned and even encouraged the killing of other players. A wave of unexpected anger went through me and I smashed my hand on the solid panel, making it distort. There was no way that I was willing to kill anyone, nor see anyone die in any world.

I quickly moved from the Salamander, instantly against the idea of even associating with a race built to kill. I looked back up at the rest of them and realised that we had never actually discussed what race we would actually pick. Daniel had told us that we would spawn depending on what race we chose. After quickly flicking through once more I had set my mind on playing as an Undine.

The only thing that put them above the rest was the fact that they were the masters of healing. A lack of healing had managed to kill a saddening number of people, a lot of them being those I knew from the front lines. Even if the other two ended up on other sides of the world, I wasn't going to risk one of us being close to dying in this game. Even if we weren't killed in reality, the fear of outright death was ingrained deep in me.

So I closed my eyes and pressed the confirm button for the Undine race, hoping that I had chosen the same as my friends. I didn't want to be in this new world on my own.

"You will now be transferred to the home town within Undine territory. Good luck." Came the sound of a mechanical announcer before a blue light engulfed me, blinding me and covering my entire body. I was on my way into the world Of Alfheim Online.


	3. Chapter 3

The world around me turned to blackness, however the blue light hung to my body and quickly grew in light seemed to be changing my body's physical appearance to what the system was randomly generating for me. This process was over within a few seconds and the blue light subsided.

However, before I could look at myself, Blue cracks of what looked light lightning ripped through the blackness. With a gigantic sound of glass cracking a white bolt descended through the emptiness in front of me and for a split second forcing me to close my eyes due to the heat. But when I opened my eyes I was somewhere completely different to before.

I was high above the ground and above the white clouds which I could see below. above me I could see a vast midnight blue sky filled with gentle white stars and a large white moon hung motionless in the distance. Below me, from the illumination of the moon.

Down below I could see an enormous green canopied forest that spanned from horizon to horizon. In the distance I could just see a large mountain range breaking out from the rooftop of deep green leaves and rising up to the sky which I was now a part of.

The world of Alfheim, or at least this small corner of it, looked as realistic as some of the grand scenic landscapes which I had seen in reality. Yet seeing such beauty from above made it more unbelievable and more breathtaking than seeing such sights from the ground to which humans are bound to.

As I was looking around I could see an array of green pillars, all connected by what looked like bridges to a central tower, all of them lit by large lights of a variety of soft colours. That must have been the home town of the Undine race, although vast forests of green colours didn't seem to fit the description of the Undine which seemed to have had an innate affinity with water and the colour of blue.

It was at this point I looked directly below me and realised that I wasn't hovering mid air or gently floating down to the ground. I was plummeting at an extreme speed and the wind whipped past me and sending shock waves of dull sound into my virtual hearing.

Under normal circumstances there would be no way that I could survive this fall, but being in a game, hopefully with all of my old character stats, the fall shouldn't kill me. Yet the fact that I was falling this fast at such a height still put me into a state of panic and the only thing I could think of was the wings that were shown on each of the race models and frantically trying to think of how to activate them.

But I knew practically nothing about this game or its control system so I was left to plummet at this stupendous speed towards the hard ground. As the seconds ticked by the tree line swiftly grew closer and closer until I hit the canopy of leaves. I sped through the leaves, leaving a hole where I had dropped through and crashed into a branch so hard that it broke off from the trunk of the tree and continued to fall with me.

I hit another two branches, both of which detached themselves from the tree with a massive sound of splintering. I then smashed straight into the hard earth, kicking a huge amount of dust up into the air and completely knocking the wind out of me and pushing my vision to a hazy darkness. Even in this hazy state I focused my eyes up to the top left of my vision where I could see my health bar, it looked exactly the same as it had done in Sword Art Online. The fall had taken me into the red section of my health, but hadn't killed me.

I looked down at myself and saw that I was wearing a long light blue robe, wit ha dark blue shirt and trousers underneath. I wore light brown boots and a tight belt was wrapped around my waist, the belt had a sheathed sword attached to it, weighing it down slightly. I raised my hand to my head and felt that my hair was straight and fell just past my shoulders, I pulled it around and saw that it was a faint blue colour.

I Pushed myself up off of the floor and into a sitting position. From my spot I looked around at my surroundings. I was in the middle of a dark forest of old and tall Oak trees. But for some reason the scene was familiar, as if I had been in this exact forest a number of times before, and this feeling put me on edge.

Yet the thing that confused me was that the announcer had said that I was supposed to be in the Undine home town. Just from looking around me I could see that this was no starting town, nor was it an area for a water based race. This looked more of a starting area for a more nature and tree based race, which from what I could remember of the races meant that I was probably near Sylph territory.

I had to find a way out of here and try and find both Sky and Aurora, there was no way I could do this without them and I was still a bit put off by the fact that I had never known their names. But I remembered something more important and more crucial to my well being than meeting up with my friends. I raised my hand and moved my thumb and forefinger to open up the menu panel.

The white panels looked exactly the same as in Sword Art Online, a panel to the left with a mannequin showing my equipment and a second panel to the right with a number of buttons which led to further panels. I drew my hand away from the panel and I stared at it with caution, it was too similar for my liking. But I had to see if it was there, so ignoring the equipment panel I scrolled down the right panel and clicked on the button with a cog for its image.

Pressing this opened up another panel with three buttons, 'options', 'help' and the one I had been purposely looking for. The logout button was there, it hadn't been greyed out and could be accessed within a few seconds. Seeing this major difference from Sword Art Online put my mind at ease for a few moments. So far everything had looked so similar, a fact that I didn't particularly like, but the addition of the logout button seemed to rid me of the anxiety that was growing in the back of my mind.

As my finger hovered over the logout button I heard a noise from behind me. I span my head around and focused my eyes in the direction the sound had come from. With my normal sight I could see nothing but the dark trees. This is where my tracking vision kicked in, obviously our skills were still with us, so I could see through the forest as if it was day, with any monster, NPC or player highlighted and glowing.

I looked around the direction the sound had come from but couldn't see anyone, nor could I see any glowing footprints that may give away what had made the sound. I tried listening out for any sound, but the forest had fallen silent. I stood up from the grassy floor and my right hand moved down to my side and was met by the hilt of a sword. Without looking at it I slowly drew it, creating a slight scraping sound, and held it to my side.

"You've gotten slow." I heard a voice of a woman, it seemed familiar but I couldn't be sure. At hearing the voice I brought my sword up in front of me and span round on the spot to see who had spoken. However instead of seeing a player I was met by a speeding arrow, aimed directly for my heart. I span my blade in my hand to its flat side and swung it downwards to protect my chest.

The arrow collided with the flat of the sword, sending off a few sparks, before it silently fell to the ground. I looked up from the arrow towards whoever had shot it, my sword still held tightly and raised in front of me. I could see a figure standing with a bow in one hand and their other hand raised and waving at me. This person had just shot at me, so why were they waving and smiling at me?

I looked closer at the person's face and dropped my guard in relief and promptly sheathed my sword. The player had a long green dress made out of a rough fabric, which went over a white shirt, along the centre of the dress was a large golden yellow belt which had a quiver full of feathered arrows attached to it. The player had long light green hair which fell below her waist yet her eyes were a bright blue.

"Aurora." I said out loud before walking forward and hugging her, she returned the tight embrace and rested her head on my shoulder.

We stood there for what felt like hours, feeling each other's warmth and heartbeats in silence. Aurora was the one who pushed away from me and while looking me in the eyes said, "Why are we back here, Andrew?" Her voice was quiet and scared. What she had said made me uneasy, but I knew exactly what she was trying to say. We had spent two years trying to escape the virtual world, yet after only three weeks we were back in a world scarily similar to the prison we escape.

"We may be out. But SAO doesn't end till everyone is out of that place." I said in a stubborn voice, for me Sword Art Online wouldn't be finished until there was nobody left trapped in the virtual world, whether that meant them being alive or dead.

At this Aurora shook her head slightly, before she moved her hand and opened her menu panel. "The majority of our skills and stats are still there, even our money has survived the transfer. The only major thing is that the majority of our items have been wiped." Surprisingly she was one step ahead of me and had already looked through the menu and our inventories.

So I opened up my own menu panel and looked at the mannequin, it looked as if I had been given starting equipment for what I was currently wearing. I quickly moved to my inventory and noticed at the top of the panel that it said, 'Joint inventory'. It had managed to keep the joint inventory between me and Aurora, but as I scrolled down the list nearly all of the items had been replaced with three question marks.

The only two items that remained from our old inventories were the two golden rings that the two of us had always worn. As my hand hovered over the ring my mind flashed back to a number of good memories that came with these rings. While I was thinking I saw one of the rings disappear from the inventory and materialise on Aurora's left hand. So I clicked on it and placed the second one on my own hand, filling a gap in my life that the bareness of that finger had left me with in the real world.

Nothing of our old inventory was still here after we had taken out our two identical rings, so I moved away from the inventory and looked at my stats and skill screen. All of my accumulated stats had stayed the same and all but a few of my sub-category skills had disappeared, instead leaving me with a large number of skill points to spend. I saw a skill devoted to magic, but unlike the others nothing had been put into it and it was left as a level 1 skill. Not knowing what I wanted to do, or how to deal with magic in this game I left it blank and exited from that panel.

"Andrew, look at this." Aurora said in a loud voice. I looked up and saw that her eyes were filled with shock and her hand was shaking slightly above the menu panel. Not knowing what she was on about, I walked to her side and focused onto the menu panel. It looked like the friends list, none of the names had been greyed out, but the majority were listed as offline.

On the list I could see 3 names listed as online, me, Sky and Woods.


	4. Chapter 4

I stared down at the panel, confused and not sure as to how to process what I was seeing. The three of us had logged in without any real problems, but the panel also showed that Steven was logged on with the same account as the one he used for Sword Art Online. Until now I had been sceptical of what the two men had been saying in the real world, I was at the point of believing that Steven was as good as dead. But here it is, proof that he was still alive and was in this world.

"It could be wrong. The friends list may just be glitching, as we're using our old accounts." Aurora said with a slow and faltering voice. It seemed that she still couldn't believe what she was looking at.

"But what if it is him?" I ask quietly, wanting to believe that he was still here and trying to push aside the doubts in my mind.

"If it's him, we'll find him and end this." Aurora replied with more confidence behind it. She closed the friends panel and grabbed hold of my hands and pulled back against them, forcing them to raise up between us. "But first we need to find Sky." She continued with a stern tone. At this she turned around, let go of one of my hands and dragged me forward into the forest with the other hand.

I quickly gave into her tugging and trailed behind her for a few seconds before I matched her pace and we moved through the forest side by side, still holding hands. I wanted to get straight into searching for Steven, I wanted a friend and comrade back with us in reality. To me getting him back in any way we could, or being told that he would never return was much better than watching him tread the balance in the hospital bed.

But however much I wanted to follow whatever trail that Steven may have left, but I found it almost impossible to ignore or go against something that Aurora had asked me to do. I cared for her too much and she was too much a part of me for me to simply shrug her off and follow my own desires, I trusted her and wanted to stay close to her. So I somewhat reluctantly followed beside Aurora making sure I didn't lose grip of the warmth in her hand.

As we ran we got deeper and deeper into the forest and so it grew ever darker and it was not long before we were practically running in pitch black conditions. It was at this point that my tracking vision kicked in again which allowed me to see the slight outlines of the trees enough so that I could avoid running into them. As we kept running I could see faint green footprints across the floor which we seemed to be following.

Suddenly practically out of thin air a large object, that was glowing a vivid bright red came into my vision and lunged at the two of us. Instinctively I fell to one knee onto the dry ground and pulled Aurora down with me, nearly making her fall forward onto her face. The glowing object which had propelled itself at us just missed our heads and landed with a loud thud a few meters away from us.

I turned around, let go of Aurora's hand, and drew out my short sword. To my left Aurora stood up to a few large steps backwards, pulled her bow from over her back had nocked an arrow within a second. The monster that had attacked us had quickly wheeled itself around and bared down at us once again.

I burst forwards, pushing hard off from the ground, and started initiated a sword skill out of pure habit. The monster swiped at me with one of its paws, which had a number of sharp, needle like claws attached to it.

I took the decision not to parry it, or even try to dodge the attack, as I was already committed to my all out sword strike. Luckily a luminous arrow flew at an unbelievable speed, hitting the paw and piercing straight through it without any problem. This arrow knocked its strike completely off target and so with a spin of my body I swung upwards and cut straight through the middle of the monster, splitting it in half and killing it.

The monster gave off a white glow before exploding into a number of particles which floated away with the gentle breeze. But although the monster was gone my body was shaking and my hand twitched around the hilt of the sword. I tried looking down at the sword in my hand but the sight of the killing blade forced me to look away. I had instinctively and brutally killed a monster, albeit a virtual representation of game data, but the speed at which I reacted to the monster shocked me.

"Andrew!" Aurora's pleading shout snapped me out of my shock and I looked up to see that she had been pushed up against a tree by another monster, which she was barely holding back by holding her bow between her and her attacker.

My grip around my sword tightened once again and my body stopped shaking as I once again burst out from my standing position. My sword skill initiated in a bright flash of red and I stabbed out at what I presumed to be the neck of the monster. The sheer force of my sword colliding with it and the small explosion caused by my sword skill sent the monster flying through the forest, crashing through trees and far beyond my tracking vision's range.

"There's going to be more of them." I said quickly, standing in front of Aurora to try and create a physical blockade from anything wishing to attack her.

"There's at least 5 of them that I can see." Aurora said through heavy breaths. Obviously her search skill was higher than my own, which came as a surprise to me. I really didn't know as much as I thought I knew about them. She then went to nock an arrow again, this time she pointed her bow upwards and shot a shining white arrow high into the trees above us. The arrow embedded itself within a branch of one of the overhanging trees and turned into a small ball of light, which acted almost like the sun.

With the area now lit up, almost as if it were daytime, I deactivated my tracking vision and looked at the monsters which were prowling in a wide circle around us. The monsters looked like wolves with grey fur, fangs and red eyes. But they were much bigger and bulkier than any wolves that existed in the real world, placing them close to bears. In this new light I could see their names, _'Wolverns",_ however I could also see that they only had a small green health bar.

The monsters circled us while giving off low growls, after their first attacks they seemed not to want to attack us and for now stayed back from us. "How do you want to do this?" I asked in a low voice. The monsters on their own wouldn't pose much of a threat, but if they attacked at the same time when either of us were off guard then it would likely deal a lot of damage.

"Best we could do is for me to shoot at them and you protect from any that try and charge us." Aurora replied after a few seconds before nocking another arrow. I readied my sword in front of me and I heard the slight noise of Aurora drawing back on her bowstring.

However before Aurora could let off her first arrow a tunnel of red and gold fire burst out from far in the forest and burnt two of the monsters to nothing within a second. A moment afterwards a huge fireball sped through the trees and crashed into the ground with a huge explosion, killing two of the monsters and knocking the last one to the ground.

The Wolvern tried to scramble itself to its feet, but its life was quickly put to an end when a longsword was thrust through its exposed neck. I looked up from the dead Wolvern to see a player wearing a large red leather trench coat, a black shirt, black trousers and heavy brown boots. Their hair was blonde and fell down their back in a single plait.

The player ripped out their sword from the ground, where it had managed to embed itself, and looked up at the two of us, who stood there in confusion. I instantly recognised the face. Sky had managed to find us while we were fighting. But the thing that threw me and put me on edge and on guard was the simple fact that she was part of the player killing race of Salamanders.


	5. Chapter 5

"God, I'm loving that fire magic already." Sky said as she sheathed her dark iron longsword into a metal sheath that hung from a leather belt. She looked at the two of us with a smile and slowly walked over to where we were standing.

However, as she began walking over, I lowered my sword to my side, not sheathing it whilst keeping a strong grip around it. Although I knew it was Sky and was well aware that she had just helped us, her being there put me on edge. After the two years of being in Aincrad surviving monsters and players, she had chosen the one race that was built specifically to kill players.

Sky looked down at my sword and stopped moving. She sent a glare towards me and casually rested her left hand on the pommel of her own sword. "Why the hostility, I just helped with killing those things and we're not exactly strangers?" She asked in an offended tone, although by the irritated look on her face I could see that she was ready for a fight should I attack her.

"Why did you chose one of the races specifically for killing players?" I answered her question as though it were an insult in itself. "We literally spent two years fighting and surviving the Pk'ers and now you join a race specifically built for them." I practically spat this last part. I could see literally no reason as to why she would want to be part of a race specifically for killers.

"Wow, do you really think that Andrew, do you honestly think that I've forgotten those years already?" She shot back at me, her tone getting angrier by the word. "I am perfectly aware that we spent two years fighting people like the coffins, good god we almost all died to them, Andrew and Oliver _did_ lose their lives to those murderers. Do you really think that I want to become one of them, even if there is no real threat of death?" She was practically shouting at me now and raised her arms up waiting for me to do something.

"Why else would you chose to become one of them? In this world they're simply killers, there's nothing good about being one of them." I fired back with anger at her sheer ignorant and quick tempered manner. "There was nine races in total, why did you pick the murderers out of them all?"

"Good God do I need to lay this out so simply for you. You've been playing games for long enough I'd hope, you know how a party structure should work. You chose a mainly magic using race in the Undine and Aurora has a ranged class with the Sylphs. If we're going up against some heavy enemies we need a tank or high DPS character to keep us alive. I didn't chose the Salamanders so that I could go and kill people! I chose it so that we can actually go and save Steven." She retorted with an anger I had never heard from her before.

My hand tightened around the handle of my sword once again at the mention of Steven and I opened my mouth to continue arguing against Sky, however from behind me Aurora shouted louder than I had ever heard her, "Stop arguing! Seriously it really doesn't matter what race you are!" her words were filled with a careless anger which quickly put me and Sky both on the back foot. "Now, if you've stopped acting like children, something's happening at that massive tree over there." She said this with exasperation and pointed up through the forest canopy and up to an enormous white tree which seemed to scrape the edge of the sky.

From down here all I could see was a large white pillar that rose up from the horizon, forming the titanic trunk of the tree, above the trunk was a vast sea of dark green leaves that spread out in a spiral from the centre of the tree. The tree on its own was easily the biggest thing that I could see, as its height easily surpassed that of the mountains that seemed to be spread out around the tree. However the canopy of green leaves started to give off a faint light.

Initially it seemed that the entire tree was being covered in a gentle yellow light, however after a few seconds I could see that each of the many many leaves had started to glow, getting brighter and brighter after every second. The light given off by the leaves illuminated the pure white trunk of the tree, clearly showing how the trunk was made up of a number of large, interwoven, spiral sections of the white wood.

Suddenly the light dimmed slightly, before exploding outwards in a blinding burst of the yellow light and I was forced to shield my eyes due to the intensity of the light. The glare took a few seconds to dissipate, but when I looked back at the tree nothing seemed out of place, the leaves were green again and the tree was plunged back into the darkness of the night. However hundreds of small orbs of the yellow light were shooting off and away from the tree, leaving a glowing yellow trail of fire through the dark sky.

In the distance I saw some of the orbs stop moving and simply drop down from the sky and plummet towards the ground. Not long after seeing these falling orbs the ground shook violently and I could hear the sound of huge explosions across the land. The orbs of light were falling like meteors, but seemed to have much more speed and strength behind them, considering how high they had fallen from.

The shakes had knocked me slightly off my footing, making me crouch down to stop myself from falling over. As the initial shocks passed and further shock waves moved through the ground I looked back up into the sky to see one of the orbs of brilliant light speeding down in our direction. I tried standing up so that I could try running away to avoid being hit by it, but the constant shaking of the ground stopped me from even getting up to my feet. Beside me both Aurora and Sky were crouching down to the ground as I was and both of them were staring at the orb that roughly was headed for us.

Luckily the orb of burning light soared over the trees above us, scorching the upper leaves as it passed and giving off a shock wave that completely knocked me to the ground. With any balance that I had lost, I pushed my head down to the ground and placed my hands over it to protect it from the imminent blast and whatever debris may fly off from the explosion.

A few seconds after it had passed over us I heard a sound that sounded as if the earth itself was being ripped apart from the centre, and the earthquake launched me from the ground and a few metres into the air. I hit the ground with a hard thud, my ears ringing loudly and my eyes tightly shut from the outside world. It seemingly took a minute for my ears to go back to normal, but when they did all of the explosions had subsided and the shaking of the ground had completely subsided.

I slowly opened my eyes to the dirt floor beneath me and pushed myself up to my feet. But I was completely off balance and I staggered over to a tree which I leaned up against, in order to wait for my balance and footing to return. In front of me Aurora pushed herself up from the ground and stood up, leaning on her bow, while Sky knelt on the floor supported by her sword, which had the tip dug deep into the ground.

I looked up from my feet and looked into the forest, roughly into the direction that the orb of light had fallen next to us. In the distance I could see the faint glowing of fires and molten rocks beginning to cool in the night air. While looking over a the fires I saw a huge shadow move out from the crater at a rapid pace. The second I saw the shadow I could hear trees splintering and shattering to pieces as whatever the shadow was, it was smashing its way through the trees towards us.

To my side Aurora, who seemed to be reorientated, shot an arrow that was covered in a white light towards the shadow. The arrow hit the shadow and illuminated its entire shape for us to see what had crept out from the crater. The shadow turned out to be of a large snake like monster that had two scythes on the side of its head, it had a single eye which was covered with a glowing green visor and nearly the entirety of its body was covered in what looked like metal scales.

This monster was very familiar and seeing it here shocked me and terrified me with just the sight of it speeding towards us. I rushed to pick my sword. which had been flung from my grip as the orb had landed, up from the ground and readied it as fast as I could. From our past encounter with the monster I knew that conventional weapons weren't going to harm it, but in this circumstance there was little else I could do as the GeoCrawler, spotted us and charged for us.


End file.
